


Sliding Into Accedence

by james



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Present Tense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-18
Updated: 2010-12-18
Packaged: 2017-10-13 18:35:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/140410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/james/pseuds/james
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Danny is having a very bad day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sliding Into Accedence

The day doesn't begin well, because Danny wakes up five minutes before he's supposed to be leaving for work, and when he does get his ass out of the apartment and headed for his car he is, still, in Hawai'i. Sometimes he hopes he'll wake up to discover it's all been a bad dream and Rachel only moved to Toms River and it's a commute to see Grace and he bitches about that instead of everything that he actually says.

But the heat and the hot and did he mention the heat, welters into his body until it's like slogging through a furnace to get to his car and drive himself to work. He remembers how the cold wet winters would make his knee ache like a bitch and he finds himself wishing for that again.

When he finds his parking spot it's little comfort to see the "Reserved" sign at the front of his slot; one of the perks McGarrett coaxed out of the governor and so now there are four spots, all quite nicely near the side entrance, for Hawai'i Five-0's best and brightest.

Or craziest. Danny figures they'll go down in the record books as the team most likely to blow themselves up in the defense of the state. It's all right by him, being known forever as the ones that got Honolulu Airport closed for four hours because of a watergun, since it was McGarrett's name in the papers and his picture on the front page and nobody really recognises Danny in public as a menace the way they do Steve.

Nobody recognises him at _all,_ which he makes the effort to laugh at Steve for while he pretends he doesn't think about how his mother has a scrapbook of all the newspaper clippings from back home. Back when he was a normal cop doing normal cop things and getting mentioned sometimes for all of two sentences for being the guy who caught the criminals.

Thinking about it makes him remember that the day didn't start well and it isn't continuing well because three steps into the building he hears Jenny Carter's voice screeching towards him and he has nowhere to duck. The journalist has been hounding all of them for weeks, digging for a scoop to liven up the very pages Danny has been wishing-- grateful he isn't on. Only Carter isn't the sort to talk about _crime_ so much as she wants to talk about damages and budgets and how can they justify the use of so many bullets when schoolchildren don't have textbooks in school.

He can't talk to her because a big part of him agrees with her, but she's too fucking annoying to want to side with and besides, there are 37,000 people in the city who could take care of the schoolkids and only four (that he knows of) who are willing to blow shit up in the name of catching bad guys.

He doesn't share that math with Carter, but he thinks it as he waves her away and ignores the recorder she's shoving in his face. He runs for the stairs then sprints up them, losing her in her high heels by the third floor where he slams the door closed behind him. He hurries for his office and by the time he sits down his knee is hurting like a sonofabitch and he knows, just _knows,_ that the day will get worse.

It gets worse when he goes to the coffee maker to find that someone drank the last pot using the last of the grounds and nobody has bothered to replace the can. His only option is Gerta down in the Controller's office, but their coffee is crap and Gerta likes to hear stories about Grace which today will only put Danny in a more bitter and horrible mood.

He considers going back home and hiding, only home is too far to get to by five and the crappy apartment where he sleeps now is not anyplace he wants to be. So he limps back to his office and sits at his desk and tries to lose himself in paperwork, which only reminds him of Tony, his partner for nearly six years. Tony had the neatest fucking handwriting on the planet, completely unlike Steve McGarrett's illegible scrawl, so typing up reports from his current partner's notes is an exercise in torture techniques. Tony might have had a thing about lining up every pencil on his desk in order of length and God help anybody who took the wrong one, but his notes were a godsend and thinking about him makes Danny's chest ache from the absence of a man he'd spent more time with than his own wife.

Which makes the divorce even less of a surprise, and Danny shoves those thoughts away with practised ease. He looks at the phone and does the math in his head; it's too late to call and besides, Danny isn't even sure what he wants to say. "Come write my reports for me" is a possibility, but not very likely. "Bring me some coffee" is another, and again, it's more likely Rachel will call him up and offer to give him Grace for a month.

He spends several minutes just staring at his computer screen and he's half a second away from just opening up a solitaire game and calling the day a wash, when there's a slight knock on his door and Steve is standing there.

Danny doesn't have any idea what's on his tongue to say, he only knows his mouth is open and all his horrible, achingly bad days are crowding up around him all at once and he just doesn't want to be here anymore.

Steve pauses in the door and his face changes without a word, then Steve is pulling Danny to his feet and calling to Chin that they're going to interview witnesses, and before he's really able to form words to ask what the hell Steve is doing, Danny is in Steve's truck and they're driving away. He rests his head on the back of the seat and stares at the roof. He remembers, as a child, being given a piece of chalk to draw on the fabric of his grandmother's car. He drew racetracks and got a toy car that he glued a piece of velcro to so he could drive it around on the ceiling, parking it upside-down beneath the visor.

When they park, Danny isn't surprised to find that Steve has brought them to his place. Steve just heads inside and Danny follows. He knows he ought to be asking questions and pointing out this isn't work, and asking what the hell is Steve the crazy man up to this time.

Instead he follows Steve inside, and when Steve nudges him, Danny sits down in a chair. Steve hands him a beer and it's probably too early for such things except if he were in Jersey it would be exactly right. So Danny pops off the cap and takes a long drink, and when Steve kneels down in front of him and looks at him, Danny thinks that Hawai'i might be full of bad, but it's also full of some pretty fucking good as well.


End file.
